Monday, July 10, 2017

Jesus: Come and Walk With Me

Sermon from July 9, 2017
Romans 7:15-25a; Matthew 11:16-19,25-30

Today we’re marking a transition even as
we see another one just on the horizon. As
you know, Mtr. Ezgi Saribay Perkins is here with us for the first time. As she makes her transition into St.
Andrew’s, she will have a grand total of 10 days to work alongside Mtr. Anne
before Mtr. Anne goes off for vacation and sabbatical, returning late in the
fall. Mtr. Anne’s last Sunday with us before
that journey will be next week, and she’ll be preaching that day. So this is my last homiletical shot for a
while with Mtr. Ezgi and Mtr. Anne both in the room.

As you know, Mtr. Anne has focused on
pastoral care in her 10 years among us.
It’s one of her greatest passions in ministry, and she has blessed us
with it richly. As she’s cared for so
many of you over the past decade, she’s come to see a growing need in pastoral
ministry, here and elsewhere – the need to help people manage the baffling maze
of changes that come with major losses and life transitions. Mtr. Anne’s sabbatical project will be
looking for ways churches can do a better job providing resources to help people
understand and cope with what’s next when they find themselves faced with illness,
job loss, addiction, or the death of someone they love.

When she returns late this fall, Mtr.
Anne’s role will shift, as you’ve heard before.
She’ll work about 15 hours a week, doing some one-on-one pastoral care
but also working on projects here at St. Andrew’s related to her sabbatical
study. So she will be back, but in a
different role than what we’ve known.

And speaking of new roles … that’s what
Mtr. Ezgi begins today. I need to be
clear that she is not taking Mtr. Anne’s place, no matter how much the timing
may look that way. What Mtr. Ezgi will
be responsible for is ministry with younger adults, families, and the
community. In fact, that’s her
title: assistant rector for younger
adults, families, and community. All of
us probably should repeat that as a mantra for a while because that specific
work is what we need Mtr. Ezgi to focus on.
We’ll have to be intentional about avoiding “mission creep”: When someone has many talents, it’s easy to
let those talents wander in a variety of directions; and we found ourselves
plagued by that a bit during Fr. Marcus’ time with us. Mtr. Ezgi would be very good at overseeing
liturgy, and being the clergy liaison with the Altar Guild, and taking the lead
on pastoral care … many of the same tasks Mtr. Anne has overseen through the
past few years. But that’s not why we
called Mtr. Ezgi here.

In a nutshell, here is Mtr. Ezgi’s job
description. Roughly half of her work
will be building relationships among younger adults and families who are part
of the parish now – those we see week in and week out, and those we don’t see
very often at all. She’ll be their
primary pastor, and lead opportunities for learning and service, and share in
our ministries with children and youth.
The other roughly half of her job will be to build similar kinds of
relationships and offer a similar pastoral presence with younger adults and
families who aren’t yet part of this
parish family – engaging people in the community around us. As the new HJ’s begins to rise from the rubble
of the old building across the street, it’s exciting to imagine new life there:
speakers, service opportunities, discussion groups, art displays, community
dinners, musical offerings, Scout meetings, and events for kids and parents –
ministry rising from the hopes and dreams both of people here and of people notyet
here. Not all of that will be specifically
targeted to younger adults and families, but much of it will be.

So, with Mtr. Anne about to leave for four
months and Mtr. Ezgi not taking Mtr. Anne’s specific role, you may be wondering
how we’ll manage pastoral care. Well, Deacon
Bruce will be coordinating it, with support from Mtr. Ezgi and me. We’ll be in the hospitals and nursing centers,
and we’ll certainly have enough breakfasts, lunches, and coffees to keep us
perpetually caffeinated. But there’s
another important pastoral resource we’ll be building over the next few months
– members of the first order of ministry, the baptized. That’s you, by the way. One of Deacon Bruce’s passions is broadening
and deepening the ministry of pastoral care to take greater advantage of the
gifts of people in this very room.

Honestly, even if Mtr. Anne were remaining
in her full-time role when she returned from sabbatical, we’d still need to be
doing this. For a long time, we’ve known
that a few ordained people simply can’t attend to the needs of this
congregation, especially as people age – which is why we have about 25 faithful
souls now making pastoral visits or phone calls or writing notes to other
members of this family. We want to build
on that foundation and raise up more of you to live into that baptismal vow we
make about continuing “in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the
breaking of bread, and the prayers” by taking that promise on the road, so to
speak – reaching out to people we often don’t see on Sunday morning.

If you feel like you’ve never been invited
to do this work before, I’m sorry. Although
we’ve tried to build up this ministry of pastoral calling and visiting several
times over the past 12 years, you may not have heard us calling your name
before. Well, I’m calling your name now. If you’ve ever felt a bit of a Holy Spirit
nudge to find out more about caring for members of this parish family, consider
this your Holy Spirit shove. We need you.

So there’s our moment of transition, in a
nutshell. It’s an exciting time,
especially for Mtr. Ezgi and for Mtr. Anne.
But you know, transitions are also a little scary. As we watch the construction happen across
the street, and welcome our new assistant rector, and bid adieu to Mtr. Anne
for a few months, we don’t know exactly what the future will hold for us. It’s an occupational hazard when you’re a
follower of Jesus Christ. Like the
apostles of the early Church, we apostles are sent out by Jesus himself to live
resurrected life and invite others into it.
New life is our birthright as baptized people. When we enter that water of baptism, we die
to the old life of sin and self-centeredness and stagnation; and we rise to a
new life of love and liberation and leadership – bringing others to find the
grace that we ourselves are finding.
That’s how we change the world – which, by the way, is our call as
followers of Jesus Christ. Changing the
world is why the Church is here.

But the thing is, as we follow Jesus into
love and as he sends us to love others, we don’t know exactly what it’s all
going to look like. And transitions
bring that uncertainty into bold relief.
God longs for Mtr. Anne to go and rest, and re-create, and learn – and
to come back here with new energy and insight to help us care for one another. And God longs for Mtr. Ezgi to come and learn
about St. Andrew’s, and create relationships with people within the parish and beyond
our boundaries, and build community that will change people’s lives. And God longs for you to step into a calling
you might be hearing, maybe to love the people around you through cards or phone
calls or visits. But you know, I can’t
stand here, in this moment of transition, and tell you exactly what any of that
will look like.

In a moment of holy uncertainty, it’s a
good time to drink deeply from the well of wisdom, to return to our roots as
God’s people and remind ourselves of some fundamentals. After all, Jesus didn’t spend much of his
time debating theology with the “wise and intelligent” (Matthew 11:25), the
scribes and Pharisees and other experts in the Law. When it came to knowing the mind of God, Jesus
regarded human expertise with a healthy dose of skepticism. So today as well, Jesus isn’t calling us to
be experts and get everything right; he’s calling us to be servants – which I
can attest is the common wiring that runs through Mtr. Anne, and Mtr. Ezgi, and
Deacon Bruce, and our staff, and the people of this good place who lead
ministries, and stage events, and clean up, and sing, and serve the chalice,
and greet people, and reach out to one another.
We’re called to be a family of servants led by servants, all of us
empowered by the Holy Spirit through our baptisms to change the world by
inviting one person after another to experience the grace we’re coming to know
ourselves.

As we follow that call, not knowing just
how it will look, we may be tempted into fear and maybe even into paralysis,
uncertain about stepping forward into a new life whose shape we can’t quite
make out. But we need not fear. We need not fear because we can let Jesus
take that burden of the outcome off our shoulders. Mtr. Anne, you don’t need to know yet exactly
what you’ll bring back from your sabbatical.
Mtr. Ezgi, you don’t need to know yet exactly what a stronger community
of younger adults and families here will look like. Deacon Bruce, we don’t need to know yet
exactly how we’ll deploy more people to call or write or visit or pray with
each other. And those of you who might
step up to serve, you don’t need to know yet exactly how to do it. We can give Jesus the burden of the outcome
because – despite our folly and even our sin, as St. Paul says, the “law that
when [we] want to do good, evil lies close at hand” (Romans 7:21) – despite all
our failings and the roadblocks we’ll meet along the way, “all shall be well,
and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well,” as Julian of
Norwich heard Jesus whispering to her. “Come
to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens,” Jesus says in
today’s Gospel, “and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in
heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matthew 11:28-29)

It’s a good antidote to anxiety. Jesus doesn’t call us to success on the
world’s terms; he calls us to faithfulness on the kingdom’s terms. And that involves taking our place right next
to Jesus and shouldering his yoke alongside him, like workhorses pulling the
load together. It’s the yoke of servant
leadership, the yoke of inviting others into the joy of love freely given, the
yoke of serving beyond our comfort zones and changing the world one small act at
a time. It is Jesus’ way that we’re called to learn and his burden that we’re called joyfully to bear alongside him.

You know, this life of letting the love of God
take flesh and dwell in the world through us – it’s not always comfortable, and
it’s certainly not predictable. But that
yoke is easy and that burden is light because Jesus is shouldering the load with
us, every step of the way.